Does language influence culture?

Open Forum in English
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  1. “that there is a universal grammar for all human languages—essentially, that languages don’t really differ from one another in significant ways.”

  2. "that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. "

I don’t think that the two hypotheses cited above contradict each other fundamentally on theoretical level.

Lost in Translation
New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world; a different sense of blame in Japanese and Spanish

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The page cited above is the same one that SanneT referred to in the first post of this thread.

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I want to ask about universal grammar:

From wikipedia:

Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics, usually credited to Noam Chomsky, that the ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain.[1] The theory suggests that linguistic ability manifests itself without being taught, and that there are properties that all natural human languages share.

I want to ask about the point, for those people who speak several languages, do you think there are properties that all natural human languages share ?

I don’t think this should be the case, because, for example, if you compare what primitive human languages would have been like (i.e. the first word, perhaps a scream/noise ?), then perhaps we moved to naming things ?

But my question is, yes, are there properties that all human languages share ?

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I find that European languages share a lot of properties, but even closely related ones have some surprising unique structures and ways of saying things.

The Asian languages that I have learned have even more different ways of putting words together to achieve the same meaning.

I believe we have a universal ability to recognizes patterns, not just in languages, but in anything. I do not believe that we are born with a “universal generative grammar” ability.

However, there probably is a limited number of ways that sounds and words can combine to produce meaning. It is inevitable therefore, it seems to me, that there will be common elements, even among unrelated languages.

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I am not the only person who does not buy the idea of a generative grammar. I gather that in the opinion of many linguistics experts Chomsky tried in vain to prove his theory and kept changing it.

As to why I do not agree with this theory, it is simply because it makes no sense to me.

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You can believe what you want and I will believe what I want. Here is a summary of some contrary views from “scientists”.

Criticisms of Chomsky’s theories

Chomsky thus continues to believe that language is “pre-organized” in some way or other within the neuronal structure of the human brain, and that the environment only shapes the contours of this network into a particular language. His approach thus remains radically opposed to that of Skinner or Piaget, for whom language is constructed solely through simple interaction with the environment. This latter, behaviourist model, in which the acquisition of language is nothing but a by-product of general cognitive development based on sensorimotor interaction with the world, would appear to have been abandoned as the result of Chomsky’s theories.

Since Chomsky first advanced these theories, however, evolutionary biologists have undermined them with the proposition that it may be only the brain’s general abilities that are “pre-organized”. These biologists believe that to try to understand language, we must approach it not from the standpoint of syntax, but rather from that of evolution and the biological structures that have resulted from it. According to Philip Lieberman, for example, language is not an instinct encoded in the cortical networks of a “language organ”, but rather a learned skill based on a “functional language system” distributed across numerous cortical and subcortical structures.

Though Lieberman does recognize that human language is by far the most sophisticated form of animal communication, he does not believe that it is a qualitatively different form, as Chomsky claims. Lieberman sees no need to posit a quantum leap in evolution or a specific area of the brain that would have been the seat of this innovation. On the contrary, he says that language can be described as a neurological system composed of several separate functional abilities.

For Lieberman and other authors, such as Terrence Deacon, it is the neural circuits of this system, and not some “language organ”, that constitute a genetically predetermined set that limits the possible characteristics of a language. In other words, these authors believe that our ancestors invented modes of communication that were compatible with the brain’s natural abilities. And the constraints inherent in these natural abilities would then have manifested themselves in the universal structures of language.

Another approach that offers an alternative to Chomsky’s universal grammar is generative semantics, developed by linguist George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley. In contrast to Chomsky, for whom syntax is independent of such things as meaning, context, knowledge, and memory, Lakoff shows that semantics, context, and other factors can come into play in the rules that govern syntax. In addition, metaphor, which earlier authors saw as a simple linguistic device, becomes for Lakoff a conceptual construct that is essential and central to the development of thought.

Lastly, even among those authors who embrace Chomsky’s universal grammar, there are various conflicting positions, in particular about how this universal grammar may have emerged. Steven Pinker, for instance, takes an adaptationist position that departs considerably from the exaptation thesis proposed by Chomsky.

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@Steve: “…If someone emigrates at a young age to another country where another language is spoken, and that language becomes his or her daily language of usage, that person’s culture changes.”

I’m not at all sure that it would be the language alone which would change this hypothetical person’s culture, Steve. It seems to me that it would be the whole ‘package’ of living in a new country, of abiding by its customs and social norms, etc (of which the local language would only be one part) which would constitute a change of culture.

Language is certainly very closely connected to culture, but in my opinion it would be an over-simplification of matters to say that “language = culture”. There are countries in the world which share a common language, but which have some significant cultural differences. (e.g. USA vs. Britain; Spain vs. Argentina, etc…)

On the other hand, how about countries like South Africa or Switzerland where many people are brought up to be fully bilingual? Do these folks have two different cultures? Or is not rather the case that they have one culture which is expressed by two languages?

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Is it possible to learn a language without learning about another culture? No, in my view. If we learn another culture are we influenced by that culture? Yes in my view. We can argue about degrees of influence, but it does influence our culture…Now of course we just have to decide what culture means, but that is probably worth another few threads.

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linguistic relativity??? (Sapir/Whorf hypothesis)

"Hipótesis whorfiana fuerte: La lengua de un hablante monolingüe determina completamente la forma en que éste conceptualiza, memoriza y clasifica la «realidad» que lo rodea (esto se da a nivel fundamentalmente semántico, aunque también influye en la manera de asumir los procesos de transformación y los estados de las cosas expresados por las acciones verbales). Es decir la lengua determina fuertemente el pensamiento del hablante.

Hipótesis whorfiana débil: La lengua de un hablante tiene cierta influencia en la forma que éste conceptualiza y memoriza la «realidad», fundamentalmente a nivel semántico. Esto significaría que a igualdad de todo lo demás pueden existir diferencias estadísticas significativas en la forma que dos hablantes de diferentes lenguas resuelven o enfocan ciertos problemas."
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  • "The question of whether languages shape the way we think goes back centuries; Charlemagne proclaimed that ‘to have a second language is to have a second soul.’ But the idea went out of favor with scientists when Noam Chomsky’s theories of language gained popularity in the 1960s and '70s. Dr. Chomsky proposed that there is a universal grammar for all human languages–essentially, that languages don’t really differ from one another in significant ways. . . .

"The search for linguistic universals yielded interesting data on languages, but after decades of work, not a single proposed universal has withstood scrutiny. Instead, as linguists probed deeper into the world’s languages (7,000 or so, only a fraction of them analyzed), innumerable unpredictable differences emerged. . . .

"Languages, of course, are human creations, tools we invent and hone to suit our needs. Simply showing that speakers of different languages think differently doesn’t tell us whether it’s language that shapes thought or the other way around. To demonstrate the causal role of language, what’s needed are studies that directly manipulate language and look for effects in cognition.

“One of the key advances in recent years has been the demonstration of precisely this causal link.”"
(Lera Boroditsky, “Lost in Translation.” The Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2010)

  • "Whorf, we now know, made many mistakes. The most serious one was to assume that our mother tongue constrains our minds and prevents us from being able to think certain thoughts. The general structure of his arguments was to claim that if a language has no word for a certain concept, then its speakers would not be able to understand this concept. . . .

“For many years, our mother tongue was claimed to be a ‘prison house’ that constrained our capacity to reason. Once it turned out that there was no evidence for such claims, this was taken as proof that people of all cultures think in fundamentally the same way. But surely it is a mistake to overestimate the importance of abstract reasoning in our lives. After all, how many daily decisions do we make on the basis of deductive logic compared with those guided by gut feeling, intuition, emotions, impulse or practical skills? The habits of mind that our culture has instilled in us from infancy shape our orientation to the world and our emotional responses to the objects we encounter, and their consequences probably go far beyond what has been experimentally demonstrated so far; they may also have a marked impact on our beliefs, values and ideologies. We may not know as yet how to measure these consequences directly or how to assess their contribution to cultural or political misunderstandings. But as a first step toward understanding one another, we can do better than pretending we all think the same.”
(Guy Deutscher, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” The New York Times Magazine, Aug. 26, 2010)

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Firstly, I’m no expert. I only speak French, English and a bit of Spanish.

Secondly, it would seem to me that there must be, in most languages, things like verbs because verbs are actions and the action of, for example “picking up” something or “putting on” your shoes must surely be necessary to describe, on condition that that culture has the necessity to put on shoes!

Thirdly, the frequency of words used in a language and a given culture seems to me to be important. I’ve commented before on the frequency of the word “c’est normal” in French, there seems to be, generally, in France a belief that in fact normality must exist because they’re using the word so flipping much! Whereas, cultural normality does not seem to exist at all. However, if you look at scientific debate, there are some absolutes (the world is round…). I think, after having lived 12 years in France, even though the mentalities between England and France generally do seem to be so different, and the ways of expressing yourself in the language too, essentially, on the scientific subjects, you come to the same result.

Does culture change first or does language change culture ? Often, culture changes because the law changes. For example, in France, we’re going to have to have an “etilotest” in the car as from the beginning of June, to check if we’ve been drinking and driving. The word “etilotest” will now become part of conversations in months to come.

It would seem to me that not being able to think certain thoughts does constrain our mind. I can’t think a thought like “n’importe quoi” in English.

O.K., these are just my random thoughts!

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